This breakthrough allowed the USSR to build its first hydrogen bomb, a device much more powerful than the atomic bombs of only a few years before. Sakharov had been told by Khrushchev to come up with a bomb that was more powerful than anything else tested so far. The Soviet Union needed to show that it could pull ahead of the US in the nuclear arms race, according to Philip Coyle, the former head of US nuclear weapons testing under President Bill Clinton, who spent 30 years helping design and test atomic weapons.
And then it did a large number of tests in the atmosphere before the Russians even did one. The original design — a three layered bomb, with uranium layers separating each stage — would have had a yield of megatons — 3, times the size of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The Soviets had already tested large devices in the atmosphere, equivalent to several megatons, but this would have been far, far bigger.
Some scientists began to believe it was too big. Before it was ready to be tested, the uranium layers that would have helped the bomb achieve its enormous yield were replaced with layers of lead, which lessened the intensity of the nuclear reaction. The Soviets had built a weapon so powerful that they were unwilling to even test it at its full capacity. And that was only one of the problems with this devastating device. And, if the bomb was as powerful as intended, the aircraft would have been on a one-way mission anyway.
The power of the bomb persuaded nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov to renounce nuclear weapons Credit: Science Photo Library. Even where nuclear weapons are concerned, there can be such as thing as too powerful, says Coyle, who is now a leading member of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a think tank based in Washington DC.
Von Hippel agrees. Things moved in a different direction — increasing missile accuracy and multiple warheads. Tsar Bomba had other effects. Von Hippel says that Sakharov was particularly worried by the amount of radioactive carbon 14 that was being emitted into the atmosphere — an isotope with a particularly long half-life.
Sakharov worried that a bomb bigger than the one tested would not be repelled by its own blastwave — like Tsar Bomba had been — and would cause global fallout, spreading toxic dirt across the planet. Sakharov become an ardent supporter of the Partial Test Ban, and an outspoken critic of nuclear proliferation and, in the late s, anti-missile defences that he feared would spur another nuclear arms race. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. Apocalypse Week Weapon.
The monster atomic bomb that was too big to use. Share using Email. By Stephen Dowling 16th August In , the Soviet Union tested a nuclear bomb so powerful that it would have been too big to use in war. Related: Doomsdays: Top 9 real ways the world could end. While Krushchev wanted a megaton nuclear weapon, engineers ultimately presented him with a megaton version — equivalent to 50 million tons 45 million metric tons of TNT detonated at once.
Even with half of the premier's requested payload, the bomb was unfathomably powerful. The bomb was thousands of times stronger than the nukes detonated by the United States over Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, and dwarfed the detonation of Castle Bravo — the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested by the United States — which yielded just 15 megatons 13 million metric tons.
As the new footage shows, the Tsar Bomba was enormous, weighing 27 tons 24 metric tons and measuring about as long as a double-decker bus. An aerial bomber carried the massive weapon high over the Novaya Zemlya islands in the Russian Arctic, then dropped it via parachute before clearing the area. The explosion was so powerful that it actually knocked the aircraft out of the sky, causing the plane to plummet 3, feet m before the pilot could right it, according to Popular Mechanics.
Top 10 doomsday threats. Thankfully, no human casualties have been attributed to the Tsar Bomba detonation, and no bomb matching its power was ever tested again. Since then, atomic tests have carried on underground as nations continue to stockpile nuclear weapons, occasionally changing the geography of the Earth around them. One nuclear test conducted in North Korea caused an entire mountain to collapse over the test facility — a reminder, perhaps, that the world hardly needs another Tsar Bomba in order to wreak devastating nuclear damage.
Brandon has been a senior writer at Live Science since , and was formerly a staff writer and editor at Reader's Digest magazine.
Instead, the U. A few years after the Tsar Bomba test, Soviet missile designers achieved a major breakthrough with liquid fuel, opening the way to produce strategic missiles that could be kept ready for launch for extended periods and hidden in protected silos. By the s, only 5 percent of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was in the form of bombs that could be dropped by aircraft. The Soviets informed the U. In a speech just a week before the blast, U. Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric suggested that the bomb wasn't intended to intimidate the U.
Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar.
Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Tsar Bomba, the largest and most powerful nuclear weapon ever created, shown here in a photo from the Russian Atomic Weapon Museum in Sarov, was detonated in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in October This map of the city of Paris shows the zone of total destruction that would occur if the Tsar Bomba were to be dropped on that city.
The red circle denotes the total destruction radius of 22 miles 35 kilometers ; the yellow circle shows the fireball radius of 2. Now That's Spin. Cite This! Try Our Sudoku Puzzles!
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